Allison interviews Matt Lewis from Evenflo about their rotating car seats that include selectable sounds and lights to help soothe the baby.
Matt describes the LiteMax NXT car seat. When installed in the car, it can swivel by 90 degrees with a simple push of a button to make loading and unloading the baby much easier. Built into this car seat is SensorySoothe technology, which provides mood lighting and soothing sounds to the baby. Sounds and lighting are selectable through the Evenflo mobile app.
Evenflo also offers a Travel System, which includes the LiteMax NXT car set that can be loaded directly into Evenflo’s Shyft Intuiti+ stroller. This lightweight stroller has been upgraded with suspension on all four wheels, an articulated leather handle, expanded storage, and plenty of hidden pockets.
Finally, Matt describes Evenflo’s SensorSafe technology, which is built into their car seats. When connected to Evenflo’s mobile app, the car seat will send alerts to your phone for situations that are potentially hazardous to the baby. Examples are the baby has unbuckled the chest clip or the parent has accidentally left the baby in the car. If the parent doesn’t respond, the app can ping other family members with a notification.
Learn more at https://evenflo.com/
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###Transcript of Interview:
Allison: Having a brand new baby is difficult under the best of circumstances, and the folks at Evenflo seem to have an idea of a way to make life a little bit easier for the young parents. And I’m here with Matt Lewis from Evenflo to tell us about it.
Matt: Yeah, so all these parents have experienced a situation where you’re in the car, your baby starts crying, and you’re like, “Oh man, what do I do?” You might look in the mirror and check on them, or you’ll do the infamous reach behind and try and pass them something that ends up on the floor with a still fussy baby.
Allison: But they’re also usually facing the wrong way now, which is backwards, which makes it even harder.
Matt: Exactly, particularly for infants. And a lot of parents will attach products to their car seat that could become dangerous projectiles in the car. And so what we really set out to do was to give parents a way to soothe their baby in the car with just their voice by activating a light and sound bar built into the car seat itself. And so you can go into the app, you can build a bunch of different soothing scenes, and then you can activate those scenes in the car with just your voice, “Hey Siri, activate sensory soothe handle.”
Allison: So this is built into the handle of the car seat, so I’m looking at a car seat that’s also part of a stroller, so it’s got the whole built-in system. And there’s a glowing light under here. And can you play some of these sounds for me, maybe?
Matt: Yeah, you might have to hold the microphone up to there to hear them.
Allison: I’ll do it.
Matt: Go ahead.
Allison: So I’m going in right now, and I’m picking from a selection of ambient nature sounds. So here’s birds, for example.
Matt: And there’s things like a wind chime.
Allison: So there’s just a cycle of different song options. And then in your light options, you can go in and you can pick from moving light effects, so things like this where it’s pulsing, or a changing light spectrum.
Matt: You can choose from different palettes, so there’s a rainbow palette or a meadow. And then for little baby infants, you can pick any color on the spectrum. And so we really tried to build different options for babies as they grow.
Allison: So is the idea that just some sort of change keeps them entertained for maybe seven or eight nanoseconds, and then you can change it again?
Matt: Hopefully a little longer than seven to eight nanoseconds, but yes. The idea is to get them distracted and engaged with something different and prevent them from getting fussy and crying.
Allison: That’s an interesting idea. Now, I saw something going on in a demo over here that the car seat going into the car can actually rotate. Can you take us over there to show us that?
Matt: Sure.
Allison: All right, we’re moving, walking across.
Matt: Yeah. So we talked about giving parents the tools to make their lives easier, and even simple, meaningful innovations like rotating your car seat. So with just the press of a button and a spin, you can now load your baby or unload your baby into the car without having to reach around and do that for them.
Allison: So he just pressed one button, and the entire car seat pivoted 90 degrees, so you’d be able to put your baby in and then turn it in, and oh my gosh, my back feels better already.
Matt: Exactly. It doesn’t matter what side of the car you have them installed in, it can rotate the other way as well.
Allison: Now, how old of a baby can you put into your Evenflo car seat?
Matt: For the infant car seats, the weight limit is up to 30 pounds, but that’s typically about a two-year-old.
Allison: Oh, okay. So this grows out of, you’ve got the infant insert, the little teeny baby insert, and then it goes for a little bit bigger?
Matt: Exactly. You can take the infant insert out, both to remove it when they’re ready or just if you need to wash it.
Allison: There you go. That would never be needed to happen, right?
Matt: No.
Allison: So is this on the market yet?
Matt: It is on the market, available for sale in mid-February at all major retailers.
Allison: Let’s talk some price point here.
Matt: Sure. It’s starting at the Sensory Soothe car seat itself. It’s called the LiteMax NXT. It starts as low as \$259, and then the travel system starts as low as $649, and there’s a variety of different tiers.
Allison: The travel system is the car seat plus the stroller attachment?
Matt: Yeah, and it’s a new stroller for us, so new car seat, new stroller, new technology, all in one.
Allison: Is there anything fun in the stroller part that’s new?
Matt: The stroller in particular was built for on-the-go, so it has suspension in the wheels, it has an articulated leather handle, it has expanded storage with some hidden secret pockets. It’s pretty sleek and modern.
Allison: Yeah, sleek, modern, lightweight. Parents seem to really like it.
Matt: There goes my back feeling better again.
Allison: Exactly. Alright, is there anything else about this?
Matt: There’s one other interesting tech feature that’s built into these car seats, and it’s called SensorSafe. SensorSafe is a technology that we’ve had for a little bit of time now, and it is connected to the same app that this is. What SensorSafe does is it sends alerts to your phone for dangerous situations for your baby in the car. Let me give you an example. A lot of one- or two-year-olds might unbuckle their chest clip while you’re driving. If they do that, it’ll ping your phone and say, “Hey, pull over. Your baby unbuckled themselves.” Or many new parents, as they’re adjusting, sometimes accidentally forget their baby in the car. I shouldn’t say many, but it does happen.
Allison: Most terrifying thing in the world.
Matt: Exactly. It becomes dangerous, risk of heat stroke, and these are all preventable situations. It will alert you if you left your baby in the car, and if you don’t respond to that, it will even ping your family members and tell them your last known location with the baby.
Allison: Wow. How does it know that the baby’s been left in the car?
Matt: It’s a Bluetooth connection between the chest clip itself and your cell phone. If the chest clip is still buckled and you walk away from the car, you lose that connection of Bluetooth, and it then knows that, “Hey, you’ve left a buckled baby in your car.”
Allison: How does it know? For example, my husband takes the baby out, does a bunch of stuff, comes back, then I take the baby out, does a bunch of stuff. How does it know my phone was disconnected, not his phone?
Matt: You can build a family on the app, and so it knows that you are part of a family, and your phone might be connected to it at one point, his phone might be connected to it at another point.
Allison: Do you actively say, “I’m now in charge of the baby”?
Matt: It’s a proximity sensor as well. If you’re the one in the car with the baby, it’ll connect to your phone. If it’s your other parent, it’ll connect to their phone. There is a primary caretaker that if they are in the car, that is who it will connect to.
Allison: I see what you’re saying. It makes the initial connection when you get in the car, and then if you leave the car without unbuckling it?
Matt: Exactly.
Allison: This is fantastic. A long time ago, our friend Brandy said to us, “You’re engineers. Figure this out. How do we stop leaving babies in cars? Find a way to do it.” It looks like Evenflo may have come up with that with the SensorSafe in the LiteMax NXT car seat. Thank you very much, Matt. This is fascinating. Where would people go to find the product?
Matt: You can obviously find it at evenflo.com, and it’ll also be available at most major retailers in the U.S. Target, Walmart, BabyList, Amazon.
Allison: Do you want to spell Evenflo for them?
Matt: Sure. E-V-E-N-F-L-O dot com.
Allison: Very good. Thank you, Matt. This is fantastic.
Matt: Thank you.
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